As part of #WorkingOutLoud, i’m sharing the design of a full Social Leadership development programme, which i am starting to deliver today, and which is fully online. I’ve delivered plenty of face to face programmes, and plenty of online sessions, but this is the first fully virtual, workshop based, long duration programme, and it’s needed to be designed from the ground up to make it work. So i’m sharing is as an example of Scaffolded Social Learning design, and as part of my own reflection on what i can improve next time around.

The first two days of the programme are a virtual workshop, where we run four sessions each day, each session around ninety minutes. That’s a lot of time to be sat around, watching a screen, so what we’ve managed to do is to gather the delegates into regional hubs: nobody is sat by themselves. With these structural units in place, we are able to create identities for the groups, and build activities that move stories between them. This ability to shape local stories, and to move and play with the location, getting other groups to interpret, or comment on them, is a key mechanism of engagement.

The two days are really ‘exploration’ days: this is the opportunity to create the disturbance, and define what the rest of the journey will look like.

From here, it moves into the ‘Social Leadership: My 1st 100 days’ journey, which i’ve previously shared as the structure of my last book. This is not a learning space, but rather a practitioner one: it’s activity based, creating space for rehearsal, active reflection, and habit formation. Central to this design is to move each of the ten day blocks to include provocation, reflection, and an Action Day. The Action Days are really important, as any learning should really be about effectiveness, about taking action.

We are nearly at the end of Day 1, and as i write these words, the cohort are sharing their stories on the Google+ space, and i’m sharing my story here, as part of #WorkingOutLoud. Social Learning is about creating spaces for sense making, spaces for collaboration, and spaces to create shared stories. And Social Leaders are the people who can hold those spaces open, and ensure that everyone can participate, equally.